Pens and pencils, notebooks, crayons, scissors, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and an eraser, all snugged into a drawstring knapsack. Thousands of them. All for a good cause.

Packaging these school kits for the less fortunate is Warner Fick, dual resident of Kalona and Mankato, Minnesota. Fick donates roughly 5,000 kits each year to Lutheran World Relief (LWR). The kits go to the poorest countries around the globe, bettering a child’s learning experience.

Fick will be honored for his efforts on May 21 at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Mankato, where he began this journey. What most excites Fick about the ceremony is the opportunity to teach people the enjoyment and power of charity.

Fick was born and raised in Iowa. He moved to Mankato when he was a young man. He then became a dual resident about ten years ago, spending two weeks here and two weeks there. Now, he tends to spend more time in Kalona with his son. It does not matter where Fick is, he will be seen putting together the school kits.

“To put a kit together is pretty random, routine, monotonous. You have to think about that every time you put a kit together, you’re giving someone somewhere that you will never meet an opportunity to excel in the classroom,” Fick said. “This is kind of like third grade stuff, but it’s what the kit represents. [The] beauty of kids getting excited to go to school [is] the awesome part.”

Fick learned of the program at church and started putting together kits about 13 years ago. What started small scale has blossomed into a massive undertaking.

“I was determined, [maybe] I can help out and pick up a few school supplies for a student or two,” Fick said. “It became apparent to me that if I bought for one student, I’d have enough left over for another half-bag, and so it’d be a lot easier to buy for maybe ten students.”

Year by year the hobby grew, and Fick started to stockpile school supplies at the start of each school year, budgeting for the increased cost of supplies to make sure he had ample amounts to keep production going. Almost all of the supplies that Fick uses he supplies himself.

LWR makes all of this possible for Fick. LWR began after World War II to help European countries affected by the war. Now, they’re a non-profit working with various other non-profits around the globe to help countries in need. More than school kits can be donated to LWR; between 2021 and 2022, their largest export was actually quilts, a whopping 342,717. School kits were their second largest export at 194,740 to 19 different countries.

LWR’s charitable acts equate to roughly $10 million a year, but in association with other non-profits, it could be closer to $130 million, according to Fick. 

Charity is the name of the game. Fick sends two separate shipments to the LWR facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, a year. The first happens in April and is the bigger of the two. The second happens in the midst of the back-to-school season, allowing Fick to accumulate all the necessary equipment but not enough time to package more than 1,300 units. In total, the two shipments equal roughly 5,000 units, all packaged at home, stored in the garage and work room, and eventually placed in a U-Haul for transportation. 

Each time Fick needs help loading up the U-Haul, he recruits volunteers from local churches who are more than willing to lend a hand. Fick received the help of Immanuel Lutheran Church from Washington, Iowa, on Apr. 14 before his most recent trek.

This isn’t the only way Fick receives help. Sometimes, he gets help packaging the kits. Once, he brought the components to an adult vacation bible school at Zion Lutheran Church, and in a weeks’ time, they had packaged roughly 500 kits. He also gets help from his family and the community on occasion.

Though many churches partake in donating school kits, Fick’s individual footprint on the effort is immense, felt, and appreciated.